Brewers ahead of the pack when it comes to diversity

This is an article by a Journal-Sentinel reporter that's gotten
national play. Today is the 61st anniversary of Jackie Robinson's
breaking the color line professional baseball and it turns out the
Brewers are among the few to have such a large number of
African-American's on their roster. The number of African-Americans in
the league has dropped considerably- by more than half- over the past
decade .

Race matters

Brewers are special case with five African-Americans

By ANTHONY WITRADO

awitrado@journalsentinel.com

Posted: April 14, 2008

As
the Milwaukee Brewers filed into the clubhouse through double metal
doors for a spring training game in Peoria, Ariz., last month, they
found a locker and sat down.

Some rested, some grabbed food, others hit the training room.

But
in one corner, four players huddled around the 3-inch screen of an
iPhone and laughed about whatever they were seeing on the sleek
contraption.

Mike Cameron, Tony Gwynn Jr., Bill Hall and Rickie
Weeks were those players. Throw in Prince Fielder and, on most days
during spring training, that quintet could be found somewhere around
the middle of the team's clubhouse.

They would talk about
hip-hop music, movies from the 1990s, their dream starting five in
basketball and a list of corny slang words someone found from an "urban
dictionary" on the Internet.Those kinds of things happen in every
clubhouse and locker room from high school to the big leagues. But in
Major League Baseball, it doesn't always look like it does with the
Brewers.

On this, the 61st anniversary of Jackie Robinson
breaking the color line in professional baseball, not every team in the
league can boast five African-Americans on the same major-league roster.

The Brewers, however, can do just that.

Cameron, Fielder, Gwynn, Hall and Weeks are all African-Americans, and they are baseball professionals.

In
today's society, that combination is becoming as rare as a day when
those five aren't reveling in each other's company. Why? The reason is
harsh, but real: Young African-Americans are not choosing baseball
anymore.

"I don't think Jack would be real happy," said Hall,
referencing Robinson, who broke Major League Baseball's color barrier
in 1947. "He and the other pioneers who gave us this opportunity to be
playing right now, I don't think they'd be too happy about it."

Today
is Jackie Robinson Day in the major leagues, and every player is
welcome to wear Robinson's retired No. 42 on his uniform. Prince
Fielder, sometimes sporting baggy pants and high socks this season as a
tribute to the Negro Leagues, will wear that number for the Brewers.

"I wore it in high school, so it's pretty cool," Fielder said. "Of course, it's an honor to wear it."

Baseball's
tribute is bound to warm hearts today, but Robinson would likely be
cold to what clubhouses have looked like in recent years.

Dwindling numbers

In
1995, 19% of big-league players were African-American, according to
Richard Lapchick, the director of the University of Central Florida's
Institute of Diversity and Ethics in Sports.

But those numbers have come crashing down since.

Only
9% of players were African-American in 2004 and 2005, and in 2006 the
number dipped to 8.4%. The numbers rose some last season, but two teams
- the Atlanta Braves and Houston Astros - had no African-Americans on
their rosters.

Things aren't any better in the college game.
Last season, less than 7% of all NCAA Division I baseball players were
African-American, according to a recent story in the Long Beach
Press-Telegram.

Those statistics, which surprised people a few
years ago but have become common knowledge by now, are why the Brewers
are an oddity. Last season, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays had five
African-American players. This season, the Los Angeles Angels of
Anaheim have six African-Americans, and besides the Brewers, five other
teams have five on their 25-man rosters.

"Besides college, this
is the first team I've been on that has had more than four," said
Weeks, who played at Southern University, a historically black college.
"I feel good about the situation because you don't see it a lot. It's
been pretty rare to see more than two people on the field who are the
same as me."

That won't be the case this season.

Weeks,
Fielder, Hall and Cameron will be regular starters this season. And
Gwynn, until a hamstring landed him on the disabled list last week, was
a regular in center field while Cameron serves a 25-game suspension.

All
of those players are homegrown talent, except for Cameron, and no older
than 28. Cameron signed with the Brewers in January partly because of
the clubhouse's make-up.

He nodded his head slowly and smiled as he was asked if the number of African-Americans on the team was a factor in his signing.

"First
and foremost, I had a chance to come to a situation where the pieces
are there, and we just have to put them together," Cameron, 35, said.
"No. 2, at this particular point in my career, to be able to instill
the values taught to me, to get a chance to share those with these
young brothers who have one or two years in the big leagues, it's
pretty cool."

Cameron got his big-league call-up in 1995, and
since then he has played on teams with lots of African-American talent,
particularly in Cincinnati in 1999 when the team had eight players.
Greg Vaughn mentored Cameron then, even allowing Cameron to live with
him during spring training.

Cameron, who has been active in
inner-city charities for years, also has two boys - Dazmon, 11, and
Mekhi, 6. This spring, they would occasionally dress in full uniform at
their father's locker. They'd play catch and take fly balls, and during
drills they'd stand to the side and study. Dazmon even left camp for a
time to fly back to Georgia for a baseball tournament.

Dazmon
and Mekhi Cameron know baseball; they were born into it and have always
been around the game. Cameron believes that is why they gravitate
toward the diamond, just as Fielder and Gwynn did as children of
major-league players.

But Cameron's sons are exceptions today.

Participation drops off

The
reason the numbers of college and professional African American players
are shrinking is because the kids are drawn to other sports and, in
some cases, are never introduced to baseball.

Basketball and
football's popularity are the main culprits, as well as dimming media
exposure and cost, among a host of other societal reasons.

There
is a misconception that those other sports lend themselves to the
natural athlete, while baseball requires less athletic ability than
basketball or football. It is also seen as boring or slow.

Of course, players take exception to that.

"You have less than eight tenths of a second to decide if you want to swing," Hall said. "I think that's pretty fast."

Still, Fielder can see why kids would gravitate to other sports.

"I
wouldn't watch baseball either if I didn't play," he said. "If you've
never actually played baseball, it's probably hard to get into it. You
can go out and play pick-up basketball because it's easier. You can't
do that with baseball."

The lack of media attention individual
players attract is another deterrent. For every baseball player in a
commercial, there are five or more basketball and football stars with
their faces plastered on the screen. And you see them year around,
while baseball players, with the exception of Derek Jeter, are rarely
in a commercial outside of the season.

But that was not always the case.

"When
I was growing up, Ken Griffey Jr. was always on TV," Gwynn said. "You
have a little bit now with Ryan Howard, but your basketball stars are
on TV all the time.

"You have to reach the community by showing
them another African-American is playing the sport. I mean, I don't
know if people really recognize Derek Jeter as black. He is
(universal)."

Cost has also played a role in the decline of
inner-city African-Americans playing the game. Basketball requires
little equipment, and football gear - pads, helmets, uniforms - can be
reused and is often given out after a one-time fee. That is becoming
less and less true with baseball, especially if you have talent and
want to play beyond a three-month summer.

So as baseball expenses go up, the number of inner-city African-American players goes down.

"They're
making it so that if you don't have money, you can't play," Hall said.
"If you want to play on good teams with good coaches, it's a lot. And
(inner-city) families don't have $1,000 to just give away for that."

Baseball
also doesn't lend itself to instant gratification. Even if drafted in
the first round, players usually toil in the minors for a least a few
years, and some may never see the illuminating lights of "The Show."

And
the hope for college is usually dashed when kids realize they might not
even get a four-figure scholarship while some schools are cutting back
or cutting out the sport from their athletic departments.

"I
really do think that's a problem," Weeks said. "These kids look for the
quick fix, meaning football and basketball, and those sports are just
throwing away scholarships.

"In baseball, you have to toil for a
while. It's a thinking man's game, and it takes a while to accumulate
experience and maturity."

Community relations

Hall, Weeks and
Gwynn have held camps for inner-city kids and Hall is even planning to
start a charity geared toward exposing African-Americans to the sport.
In December, Hall and Weeks took 15 players from the Beckum-Stapleton
Little League on a day-long trip to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum
in Kansas City. Each player said they learned as much as the kids and
plan to continue exposing inner-city children to the game and its
players, including themselves.

"Obviously, once we make it, we
don't live in urban communities anymore," Hall said. "So they don't get
to see us, but they need to understand we listen to rap music, too; we
like Jay-Z and Tupac and everybody else.

"We're just like them."

If
kids knew that, they might be more comfortable with the game, Hall
added. And even though they are adults, the African-Americans on the
Brewers roster covet the comfort of being around people like themselves.

"You're
going to go where you're comfortable," Cameron said. "Me and (Gwynn)
Jr. talk about things maybe only we understand, and I think that's
important to have."

While Cameron, Fielder, Hall, Gwynn and
Weeks could often be seen together in the clubhouse and in the dugout
this spring, the white and Latino players get along with them, and each
other, just as well. During spring training, Ryan Braun and J.J. Hardy
had ping-pong tournaments with Venezuelan minor-leaguers Hernan
Iribarren and Alcides Escobar, and Cameron sometimes yelled across the
clubhouse in Spanish to his Latin teammates.

But with the opportunities becoming scarce, the African-American players are savoring this experience.

"But
it is human nature to gravitate toward people you know, people you're
familiar with. With the game being predominately white and Spanish,
it's rare to have this many African-Americans on one team. So you try
to suck it in as much as you can."

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